Spain: Football piracy costs 500,000 pay-TV subs

Football piracy is having a big impact on pay-TV operators in Spain losing them half a million subscribers. This is the estimation of the president of the Football Association in Spain LFP, Javier Tebas, who has pointed out that piracy websites that illegally stream matches via P2P links, are seriously damaging pay-TV operators’ income.

To tackle this, LFP has joined forces with Iproded, a public organisation to protect digital rights, to develop a tool to control football broadcasting over the Internet. The LFP project aims to close down the pirate streaming signals immediately on detection and report them to the site holding the link, using the recent anti-piracy law.

Tebas is also in favour of eliminating FTA football TV transmissions to the benefit of pay-TV operators and football teams who would increase their revenues significantly, as the UK model has done.